


See Through You

by stormbird



Series: coven [1]
Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Abandonment Issues, Alternate Universe - Witchcraft, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Magic, Mentioned Stray Kids Ensemble, Supernatural Elements, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-14 16:43:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21018971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stormbird/pseuds/stormbird
Summary: Felix never quite understood why Chan felt the need to carry the weight of all nine of them by himself, but at least he could be there to make sure it didn't break him.





	See Through You

When Chan quietly entered the house at half past three in the morning, Felix could sense the tension in his body from a whole floor away. Their home was an fine-tuned balance of nine energies weaved together as one, and the disharmony that reverberated throughout the walls when Chan walked inside was jarring. 

A shudder ran through Felix’s body.

For a few moments he lay still in his bed and listened to the light creaks of the wooden floors as Chan walked around downstairs. When he realized that Chan wasn’t going to bed anytime soon, Felix slipped out from beneath the covers, careful not to wake any of the others up. 

When Felix came downstairs he found the kitchen door shut. Two things emanated from behind it; the muffled sound of the electric kettle, and a discordant energy that sent a shiver of worry down Felix’s spine.

He knew how to deal with this. Even when it got bad. But so did Chan, more so than Felix, and yet here he was. Out of step with the rest of them.

Felix opened the door to the kitchen and the sudden creak made Chan flinch. He was all wound up, even as his eyes fell on Felix who lingered in the doorway.

“I thought you’d gone to bed," Chan said. The smile he gave Felix was warm, but barely reached his eyes.

Felix leaned against the doorframe. He was still tired, but sleep would have to wait. “I had. But I heard you come home.”

The roar of boiling water came to a head, and the electric kettle turned off. Silence fell over them.

It wasn’t often that Felix could see auras of any kind, but right now there was something around Chan. It was barely visible, like a heat shimmer clinging to his body, a colourless thing. It rippled in the air around him as he took a cup from a cabinet and picked out his tea.

Felix only saw auras when things were too far gone to be fully kept inside. But when it came to people he knew as well as Chan he could see other signs too, like the tired look in Chan’s eyes and the stiff tension in his muscles. Something had built up over time, concealed until the point where the pressure was starting to break him.

“It’s late.” Chan’s words were laced with exhaustion, but also with love. “You should be sleeping.”

Chan filled up his cup and steam rose from it, white wisps curling into the air. The gentle movement was a sharp contrast to the way Chan’s aura seemed to be nearly vibrating around him.

“So should you. You’re exhausted.” 

Felix walked up to where Chan was standing at the counter and wrapped his arms around him from behind, his face pressed against the elder’s back. His magic wrapped around Chan too, and he understood immediately why Chan was so tense.

There was a bundle of negative energy inside of Chan, all tight snares and sharp thorns, and when Felix tried to gently push it away it pushed right back.

Aggressive. No wonder Chan couldn’t sleep.

“Let me give you a massage.” Felix’s voice was muffled by Chan’s sweater, but he knew Chan had heard him.

Chan sighed softly. “You shouldn’t have to deal with this, love.”

Listening to him now, Felix realized that Chan didn’t just sound tired. He sounded weary. How long had he been carrying this? 

Felix couldn’t help the gnawing guilt in the pit of his stomach. They should have noticed. _He_ should have noticed.

“Neither should you. Let me help.”

Felix expected more of an argument. Instead Chan took a deep breath, heaved it out with another sigh, and nodded. The relief at not having to talk Chan into accepting help was undercut by the realization that Chan just didn’t have any fight left in him.

Felix took Chan’s cup in one hand and led him out to the living room, his other hand not letting go of Chan’s until he’d gotten the elder to sit down sideways on the couch. Chan took his sweater off and bundled it up in his lap as Felix sat down behind him.

“You can take your shirt off too, if you want,” Felix said.

It was true that skin contact would help his magic reach out better. His and Chan’s magic were similar in that regard, amplified through touch, but that was only part of the reason Felix asked. The other part was the fact that Chan was _Chan_. Touch was to him like water to a plant.

There wasn’t anything magical about that. Just a simple human need for connection.

Chan shrugged off his t-shirt as well, and his pale skin seemed to glow in the moonlight. Felix placed his palms against Chan’s back and concentrated, pushing his magic forward. It flowed from the core of his body, through his fingers and into Chan. 

It was worse than he thought. 

Most of the time Felix could disperse bad moods with relative ease, sweeping it away like dust. But what he felt inside of Chan was too big for that, too deeply rooted. It had wrapped around his ribs and organs, a great tangled knot of dark energy that didn’t budge to Felix’s gentle touches.

This had to be done slowly, and with great care. All magic carried its risks, and if Felix was impatient or careless when working with emotions on this scale he could cause more harm than good.

He moved his hands upwards, to Chan’s neck. It was easier to start there, further from the heart.

Chan’s muscles were as knotted up as his insides. Felix tried not to press too hard against them, not wanting to cause too much pain. Instead his fingers gently worked out the tension as he began to pull away the darkness from Chan’s insides.

Chan’s head tipped forward slightly as Felix made his way down to his shoulders, working out the kinks with his fingers and dispersing the negative energy with his magic. The darkness stuck to Felix like burrs, stinging his skin until he took his hands off Chan for a moment to gather it all up. He put it on the living room table for now. There it sat, an angry swarm without a home, emotions without anyone to feel them.

“I’ll deal with you later,” Felix mumbled and continued.

There were simple things up here. Bad weather days and momentary stressors. An argument over something insignificant. A lost item, replaceable. Things that should have been easy for Chan himself to disperse, to forget. Felix couldn’t even see the details of them easily – he couldn’t tell who the argument was with or what it had been about. He couldn’t tell what Chan had misplaced. Maybe Chan couldn’t either. The details weren’t as important as the traces they left, wisps and strands of negative energy that would have disappeared eventually if they hadn’t gotten entangled and anchored in the giant knot beneath.

This was how it built up. Small things, lingering where they shouldn’t. Felix got to work on getting rid of them all, one by one. The swarm on the table grew as he kept working, gently untangling as much as he could until he reached further down Chan’s back. 

The core of the dark knot was there, in the center of Chan’s chest, and Felix reached out his magic gently towards it, as if he was greeting a snarling beast. It was big enough to take up most of the space inside of Chan, pressing against his heart and lungs. Choking him from the inside. Felix traced along the edges of it and he ached for Chan.

As Felix began to undo the knot, he noticed something that had he had earlier been unable to see. There were bright spots inside of the darkness, good things that were trapped and choked by the tendrils of negative energy. Felix had to be even more careful than usual, or he might cause irreparable damage to things Chan held precious.

The first thing he managed to dislodge radiated warmth, and smelled like pine and freshly-baked bread. It was safe and familiar. A house, a home. 

_Their_ home. All wrapped up in guilt and fear of not being able to provide what his coven needed, what they deserved.

Chan had brought them together. He had given them a family and a home. He had shown them what love and happiness was, and Felix’s heart broke at the thought that Chan felt he had still not given them enough.

Felix swept the negative emotions off one by one. Like spring cleaning, opening all the windows to let the old air out and the sunshine in, he removed Chan’s worries until their home was once again a spot of familiar warmth. He anchored it between two of Chan’s ribs, where it sat safe and sturdy. 

From their home trailed a ribbon of golden energy, down into the thornbush knot in Chan’s chest. Felix tried to follow it, but the ribbon was torn and frayed by the darkness that weaved through it, and even the lightest tug on it nearly made it tear apart.

Felix had seen the ribbon before, within himself. It had appeared when he chose to join Chan and his coven, when he finally found what he had been looking for for so long.

A family, by choice rather than blood.

He dread to think of what the ribbon was leading to, what exactly it was that had become buried in Chan’s chest, all tangled up in darkness.

“I love you,” he whispered, and pressed a kiss to Chan’s shoulder. A fragment of the dark energy came loose on its own, and Felix scooped it up with a gentle press of his thumbs against Chan’s back. The living room table was spilling over by now, but Felix still had so much work left to do. He returned to his task.

As laborious as this process was for Felix, it was not easy for Chan either. Felix could feel the way he trembled beneath Felix’s fingertips as he drew his slow breaths. It spoke volumes of how much he trusted the younger, that he would let Felix in like this, to sift through the most intimate parts of him.

Felix had known since the moment he met Chan that he was the type to put his loved ones before himself. But his sense of responsibility was a double edged sword – it was the reason he was such a good coven leader, but it had also led him to the false belief that he must always stay strong lest everything around him crumble. While he was the first to tell them that they should be open about their feelings and their struggles, it had always been hard for him to follow his own advice.

Chan was strong. But some things were too big to carry on your own, even for those with the kind of magic that Chan and Felix possessed.

Close to where the ribbon disappeared into the knot Felix could see a spot of bright energy. Tendrils from the knot were creeping up on it like vines, but it was yet to be completely taken over by the darkness.

Felix knew it to be Seungmin. The energy radiating from it was gentle and reliable, but with an edge to it.

When Felix reached out his energy to touch it, he was met with memories and emotions. It was the parts of Seungmin that lived within Chan. Love, trust, admiration.

It was wrapped in fear and guilt, just like their home had been. But this was a different kind. Felix removed the tendrils of negative energy one by one, feeling Chan’s worries through the link between them. The guilt of taking something, someone, for granted. The fear that he might have neglected someone when they needed him, that he might have been too focused on other things to properly care for one of the the quieter members of his coven.

Chan’s anxieties were uncovered with each brush of Felix’s magic against the darkness. He was still trembling beneath Felix’s fingers as the younger did away with the negative thoughts that were pulling Seungmin’s energy towards that knot of darkness. As soon as it was free Felix felt a breath leave Chan’s body.

It took another ten minutes before Felix had untangled enough of the knot to gently pull loose more of the golden ribbon, and along with it followed something else. It was a silken thing, black and shiny, and when Felix prodded it with his magic he could feel Hyunjin’s energy radiating from it. 

Hyunjin, sprawled across Changbin and Seungmin’s laps, basking in their attention. Hyunjin, eyes crescenting with laughter as he played with Jeongin. Hyunjin, wrapping himself around Jisung’s shoulders with a content smile on his face.

A thread of darkness ripped through the silk.

Hyunjin, his eyes black, a robe pooled at his feet. His bare skin inked and scarred, covered in the markings of Baphomet. His hands dripping with blood that wasn’t his own.

Felix managed to stop himself from recoiling at the sight, but he felt Chan flinch beneath his fingers.

“It’s not real,” Felix whispered as he unthreaded the dark energy from the part of Chan’s heart where Hyunjin resided. It wasn’t a memory, only the fear of what could have been. “They can’t touch him. He’s with us now.”

Chan’s voice was rough with emotion when he spoke. “I should have gotten him out of there quicker. If only I hadn’t doubted him at first, I could have–”

“You were only trying to keep us safe. And you saved his life, you gave him a home. Without any cults or demons or blood sacrifices.” Felix kissed Chan’s shoulder again, keeping his lips pressed against the trembling skin as he continued to speak. “He loves you for that.”

The words unlodged the final remnants of darkness that clung to the silk. It finally fluttered freely around the golden ribbon, shimmering the same way Hyunjin’s hair did on a sunny day.

It worried Felix that Hyunjin had been trapped in such darkness. They were a coven, a family, meant to give each other strength. If the reason Chan carried this kind of negative energy within himself was because of _them_–

Felix didn’t want to think about it. Not now. Right now he would do what he could, balance Chan’s energy and bring him back into harmony with the rest of them. But it wasn’t a permanent solution. He wouldn’t be able to stop the guilt and fear from returning, that was something Chan would have to learn to manage before it got all piled up like this.

The next thing Felix uncovered was rust-coloured and fuzzy, and it writhed inside the dark knot like an animal caught in a snare. Felix knew it was Jeongin before his magic even touched it. Fox eyes, a sharp smile. A feral child, a boy and a beast.

Felix began to set it free. The negative energy that ensnared it stung him like nettles, poisonous thoughts that Felix gathered up in his arms like bunches of wildflowers.

Chan’s anxieties echoed in Felix’s mind. Would Jeongin have been happier if he had been left alone, free to roam the woodland? None of them had missed the way he would retract into his animal shape when being a human was too tiring, and Chan worried that it was a direct result of his own shortcomings.

"If he wanted to live in the deep forest and catch mice for dinner, he would. He could leave at any time, if he wanted to, but he doesn’t. He chooses to stay with us." Felix untangled the furry little thing, careful as not to hurt it. If he ruined a single memory, any spot of brightness within Chan, he would never forgive himself.

As soon as Jeongin's energy was free it scurried up along the golden ribbon, away from the darkness. Felix leaned forward, resting his chin on Chan's shoulder. It had been a long time since he used this much magic at once, and the lack of sleep was starting to catch up with him. 

Beside them, the table buzzed with all the things Felix had drawn out of Chan.

"You don’t have to keep going." Chan's voice was weak, and Felix knew it was time for him to be the strong one.

"I want to," he replied. And so he did.

He worked methodically around the edges of the knot, loosening it up little by little. He kept finding small happy things stuck in there, songs that Chan used to hum to himself, the view from their porch as the sun set over their house, a warm home-cooked meal on a cold autumn day. 

Pain and guilt roiled inside of Felix with each thing he set free. How hard it must have been for Chan all this time, to have even his smallest pieces of happiness twisted up in this darkness.

Felix reached his magic further and found another part of their coven, fluttering like a moth inside the trappings of darkness. Iridescent peacock feathers, shifting into leopard spots, shifting into viper scales. It was harder than ever to figure out where the darkness ended and the light began when the energy kept changing the way that it did. Mask after mask, illusion giving way to illusion.

Minho.

Felix nudged his way through the memories of Chan meeting Minho for the first time, and the way Minho had been gone the next time Chan tried to find him. There, gone, there, gone. Finally there, theirs, a permanent etching in their lives. Minho lived a traveller's life before he met them, remaking himself in every new town he entered.

When Felix finally grasped the threads of dark energy he found that they were similar to what Felix had set Jeongin free from. The same darkness, but a different hue.

An empty room. Minho, gone. 

The heavy weight of having your utmost efforts not be enough, of not knowing how to create a home for someone who had never longed for one. The worry that you trapped a wild bird in a cage just to ease your own loneliness.

Felix's deep voice broke through the silence again. "He won't leave you either, love. He chose to join, and he chooses to stay." 

He never realized how much Chan worried that his coven would fall apart around him. He always thought they were the ones who needed Chan the most. After all, he was the light they had all been drawn to, the center of their strange little family.

But Chan needed them just as much.

Felix set the moth-energy free, and it fluttered around Chan's insides, weaving between his ribs. And there it stayed.

They would need to talk about this later, the whole coven. Felix would not let it build up to this point ever again, not if he could help it. And while he could lessen the strain, undo some tensions, he couldn't stop it from returning. Only Chan could do that. And they would help him.

The treetops had begun to glow golden from the rising sun by the time Felix worked loose enough of the entanglement to follow the golden ribbon further into the core of the knot. There he found a once sharp thing, obsidian spikes smoothed down to soft edges, and when Felix reached out his magic towards it he could feel Changbin's warmth radiating from it.

He reached further and the warmth was replaced with a freezing cold. The spikes were once again sharp, ready to draw blood from anyone who drew near. It was a shell, hard as crystal, black as night.

But this was not the negative energy Felix was seeking to untangle. This was pure memory.

Changbin had already been with Chan for a long time when Felix met them, and suddenly Felix found himself thankful. If this was who Changbin had been before the coven, Felix would be shaking in fear had they ever met back then.

The spikes were all caught up in the knot and it took Felix more effort than he thought to detangle it. He didn’t want to remove the memory, only set it free from the fear that things that had once been would again come to pass, so he worked gently and with great patience.

As soon the negative energy was gone the obsidian was smooth again. Black ice, thawed. Felix nudged it towards the warmest spot near Chan's heart. 

He was reaching the center of the thorny entanglement now. With everything he had managed to pull loose the knot was now a small thing compared to earlier, but it was still about the size of Felix's two fists. He found himself wishing yet again that he had noticed something earlier. That Chan would have trusted him enough to ask for help.

"I didn't realize it had gotten so bad," Chan whispered, as if he knew what Felix was thinking.

Chan was good at that, knowing what they were thinking. It was yet another reason as to why he made a good coven leader, and why they all trusted him so implicitly. 

But right now it was Felix who had Chan’s thoughts at his fingertips, Chan’s complete trust in his hands.

"Don't worry. I'll make it better." 

Felix's only goal right now was to dispel the root of this mess, and he was finally getting close. His hands were still on Chan's skin, but he wasn't massaging anymore. Instead he was just giving gentle strokes, magic trickling from his fingertips into Chan's body where he picked at the tightest part of the knot, careful as not to damage anything wrapped up in that cursed web.

When he reached in gently he could see that there were still things lodged in there. One of them was close, so he stretched his magic out further and gasped as he brushed against it.

He saw the fire before he saw Jisung. The glowing ember was so entangled in dark thoughts that Felix couldn't even touch it without also touching the darkness surrounding it.

Fire. Chaos. Magic, hidden and repressed, suddenly loose and out of control.

This sight was not for him. It was a memory of someone else's memory. Chan drew a shuddering breath and Jisung's screams echoed in their heads.

Felix's heart ached as he untangled the ember. For Jisung, whose nightmares still left him crying and shaking. For Chan, who wished so badly that he could undo something far in the past.

Chan had entered Jisung's life too late to pull him from the fire, but he had been the one to unearth him and help him rise from the ashes. They couldn’t change the past but they could shape the future.

When the ember was free from the dark knot it glowed with a golden light, the same shade as the ribbon that continued into the center of Chan’s chest. The golden ribbon continued into the very core of the knot, and there, in the center of Chan's chest, was a ball of light. A little miniature sun, with a shard of darkness pierced through its center like broken glass. Felix could see now how the knot had grown so entangled, as he gently removed the negative energy that had gotten caught on the jagged edges of the shard.

After some time he had managed to disperse everything apart from the actual shard. When he brushed against the warm sun he felt his own energy flicker back, as if in greeting.

"Is this how you see me?" he asked in a soft voice. 

Chan nodded, and Felix's heart did a little somersault. Even now, after living in the coven for so long, he found himself overwhelmed by the love he held for them all. 

The other things he had dislodged had been wrapped up, entangled, but here there was a rupture. Felix didn't doubt that it could heal, but only if he could dislodge the shard without too much damage.

A part of him was scared to find out what it was that had caused such mayhem inside Chan. Was it something he had said or done?

He wrapped his arms around Chan's chest, pressing fully against his bare skin and letting his magic flow through every point of connection between them. He reached for the shard and heard his own voice.

"They want me to come visit." Felix was perched on the kitchen counter, legs dangling as he read the letter in his hands. He remembered this, it had been about a week and a half ago.

Chan paused in stirring the pot on the stove and Minho moved in to take over the task without even blinking.

"Visit?" Chan echoed.

"Why now? They haven't even talked to you since they kicked you out," Jeongin said from where he was sitting by the kitchen table, having been forcibly pulled down into Seungmins lap. As usual, he had put up the front of a protest for all about thirty seconds before giving in and leaning into the warmth of Seungmins embrace.

Ever since Felix told the coven of how he his parents made him leave his childhood home at the age of thirteen in order to ‘find his own magic’ as they’d put it, an archaic practice that often caused more harm than it did good, few of his coven members had any love left over for Felix's family. 

Felix had to admit that didn't care for them much either. Only now that he had begun to grow confident in his magic and become part of a coven did they bother to reach out again, and it left a sour taste in his mouth.

But still, it was hard for him to dismiss the letter outright. They were his parents after all, and he wanted to think the best of them, as he did with all people. Their intentions when making him leave had not been bad, right? They just wanted what was best for him, even if he had cried and begged and pleaded with them to let him stay.

"Apparently they heard that I'm part of a coven. That's why they want to meet now, I guess." Felix's eyes lingered on his mother's handwriting. She wrote that she was proud of him for finding his magic, like they always knew he would. Felix would have expected the acknowledgement to feel good, but the memories of all the hard times he had gone through alone made the words ring hollow.

"Do you want to go see them?" Chan's voice was neutral when he asked the question, and at the time Felix hadn't thought much of it. He had been too distracted by the letter to pay much attention to anything around him. But now, living this memory through both himself and Chan, he could see the tension starting to set into Chan's shoulders. He could hear the worry layered beneath the question too, the fear that Felix's reply might not be what Chan hoped to hear.

"I'll think about it," Felix had replied in the end, and when he withdrew from the memory he found himself tightening his hold on Chan. Beneath his hand he could feel the erratic beat of Chan’s heart.

“I’m sorry,” Chan said. His chest moved against Felix’s arms as he drew a shaky breath. “I don’t want to keep you from them, I just– it scares me. That you might not want to return to us. Or that you’ll be hurt again because of them. Sometimes I don’t know which is worse.”

And there it was again, that fear. That overwhelming feeling of failure and helplessness.

Felix rested his chin on Chan’s shoulder, speaking softly into his ear. “You’re an idiot if you think I’m ever leaving you. They might be my parents, but you’re my family. This is my home.” His magic pushed against the dark energy that pierced the sun in Chan’s heart, gently pulling the splinter out. “I’m staying here with you, for as long as you’ll have me.”

The final piece of darkness was dislodged from Chan’s insides and Felix pulled away, taking it with him. He made quick work of gathering up all of those buzzing thoughts and emotions, everything that had spilled over the edges of the living room table. His magic was nearly exhausted, and he spent the last of it on pressing that darkness together until the large mass was concentrated in a small stone-like ball. It landed on the table with a heavy thunk, and then lay silent. 

It was contained now. Felix could take care of it later.

Only now that the buzz of negative energy was suddenly gone did he notice how loud it had been. It was a relief that only Chan and Felix possessed the kind of magic that was tuned into these energies in that way, or the others would have woken up long ago. But now the stillness of the house was broken only by their tired breaths, and Felix wasted no time in crawling into Chan’s lap. He was completely drained, his exhaustion quickly catching up with him as he leaned into Chan’s chest.

“Thank you. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” Chan whispered, holding Felix close. “Now please, love, get some rest.”

“You too,” Felix mumbled. He would love to sink into one of the beds upstairs, but he was far too tired to even get up from the couch. Instead he coaxed Chan to lie down, grabbing the woolen blanket that lay folded over the back of the couch for cold days, covering them both with it.

Chan’s arms wrapped around Felix, pulling him in towards the warmth of his body. He pressed soft kisses against Felix’s forehead and cheeks. Felix’s heart somersaulted again, the only part of him that seemed to have any energy left.

Day was breaking, and the others would probably start to wake up within a couple of hours. There would be plenty to talk about then, but for now Felix let himself give into the exhaustion and relax into Chan’s arms. 

To think that Chan worried about him leaving. If anyone wanted to take him away from this coven they would have to drag him kicking and screaming, and even then Felix would find his way back somehow. He just had to make sure to remind Chan of that fact as often as he could.


End file.
